FILE PHOTO: The L.A. Galaxy will play for the team’s fifth MLS Cup Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014, against New England at StubHub Center. If they win, the Galaxy will own more league championships than any other team in MLS. (Micah Escamilla/Redlands Daily Facts)

If they go ahead and capture the MLS Cup with a win over the New England Revolution on Sunday at StubHub Center, it would be a league-record fifth title for the club.

It would also be the third in the last four seasons under Coach Bruce Arena, an achievement that these days qualifies as a dynasty in just about any league.

But is it enough to capture the hearts of a city the way the other teams do? The Lakers are entrenched with their 16 banners in Staples Center. Even with a 26-year hiatus, the Dodgers have captured five World Series titles in Los Angeles. Angels fans still bask in the glow of the 2002 World Series title.

The Ducks have won the Stanley Cup. And the Kings grabbed the downtown parade fever with two Stanley Cup victories in the past three years.

Does anybody even know the Galaxy are on the verge of a fifth crown? Maybe, but not even the coaches or players seem to want to talk about it.

“Until we get through this final game, then we’ll be able to summarize what we think about this team and other teams,” Arena said. “They have an opportunity to be the MLS champions, so we look forward to that challenge. It’s going to be a tough game.”

Dynasty or not, and the club next year has a major hole to fill with the retirement of Landon Donovan, it’s still soccer. In the United States, the popularity of the sport is measured basically only every four years, when World Cup fever rolls around.

Major League Soccer is drawing some record crowds. The current 18-team league will be 20 next season and Commissioner Don Garber wants to have 24 franchises by 2020 (Are you ready for Las Vegas?)

The Galaxy’s supremacy in Los Angeles, with the disbanding of Chivas USA after 10 seasons, will presumably be challenged by L.A. Football Club’s entry into the league in 2017.

Then the league will have two franchises in Los Angeles and two in New York as anchors.

Yet undoubtedly, the sport will still be relegated to an afterthought in sports sections and websites.

It may be the global game, but it’s hardly universal here. And Arena, as optimistic as he is about MLS, understands the media’s role in the future of the sport.

“Of course we have the potential to be the best,” Arena said in SI.com. “We have the potential to be the best in anything we do. But we need to have better coverage in this sport. Right now, listen, it depends on what your definition of the best is, I’m not sure having all these rag newspapers in England is necessarily … But they’re on the game 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

The Galaxy had world soccer icon David Beckham for six years, but made him available to the media only on game days and after one training session a week.

The same has held true for Donovan and Robbie Keane, the team captain and this year’s MLS MVP.

At the same time, the Galaxy have extensive roots in the community and just this week pledged to refurbish a synthetic turf field in South Central Los Angeles at A Place Called Hope.

MLS and the players’ association must hammer out a new collective-bargaining agreement before next season, but both Garber and Galaxy player rep Todd Dunivant said in recent days the two sides have been at least cooperative with each other.

So that’s a positive. But now the Galaxy must find a star-power replacement for Donovan to keep progressing to a cherished spot in the hearts of Angelenos.

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